Monday, August 25, 2014

Our light bulb moments are as ping pong balls of illumination bobbing occasionally above the surface of the Shibbolethular.

It’s true that the light seems ON for most of our waking moments, and it’s truer that from time to time it seems ON enough for us to consider that we have been sufficiently illuminated so as to proclaim to one and all of our eurekae. But in reality we exist and persist in a kind of frothing soup, a swirl of gloopy, half-done / half-begun, half unknown spickle spockles of wift, waft and whobbicle.

I suppose what we long for is a perpetuity of distinctness — clear cut emotions and thoughts like the kind our fictional heroes and heroines experience.

Oh to be HAPPY or EXCITED — even ANGRY or SAD if you know it and you really want to show it and clap your hands.

But the world is more “in progress” than even the most speculative WIP, and the Here and Now demands that we surf mainly on a wave of the Shibbolethular. Our fictional heroes and heroines resemble us more than we resemble them. Their lives have distinct beginnings, middles and endings, and their journeys are all plotted out according to rules laid down in a multitude of HOW TO MARKET YOUR FICTION ebooks and tattoos. Better still, their motives are so clear as to be worn on a sleevitude of cover illustrations and tightly written blurbs.

Play Shibbolethular with your characters, plots and motivations, and you’re sunk as a writer. The ONE word, the ONE thought, the ONE action: these are what your final edits demand.

I begin to wonder if we have been hoodwinked by the image of the light bulb as a metaphor for creative voila. It’s undoubtedly the case that when all of the pieces of a conundrum drop into place, all is c’est la voila vie, but this can only ever be the result of much swimming around in the Shibbolethular. When you’re in THAT place, it does no good to try to race ahead to Miracle Inspiration Land — to desire the ONE word, the ONE thought, the ONE action. Here, you must be free to drift as no fictional hero or heroine is ever permitted to do — unless you’re in some kind of slipstream novel drawing heavily on Joyce, Burroughs, Gazza and that hapless drunk from The Pogues.

But that’s today.

My swirls of thought are as swamps, when tomorrow they will be electron storms or fire crackles, possibly hurled doughnuts.

Nonetheless, the distinction between the qualities of fact and fiction remains the same: both are entirely made up, according to differently similar rules.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

OK, so we’re all still waiting for the Whotastic Capaldilistic Spectacular as trailed from the moment Matt Smith threw off the wrinkly mask last Christmas.

Had we been Time Lords like the good Doctor we could all have hopped in our Tardises and flipped ahead to today moments after vacuuming the Brussels sprout gas from our combined Whovian digestive tracts.

But no.

The BBC has made many mistakes over the years — especially when it resurrected Basil Brush as a cuddly toy — but no more colossal a catastrophe has it heaped on its Beeblings than to interpose an eight month hiatus between the initial Capaldi-induced salivations of a nation and the opportunity to bite deep into tangible and evident regenerated Gallifrey rusk.

That said, casting an older Doctor is a masterstroke. Brilliant as he was, Matt Smith sadly came bundled with one or two scripts that were a tad too jokesy and YA novel for my liking, but now Moffat and Co have hooked the American audience with our very best weirdsily eccentric Brit fayre (and thrown in Benedict Cumberbatch as a kind of luxury after dinner mint) maybe we can expect a return to a more gravitas-based imaginary weightlessness.

I just hope the budget extends to pressing a few new monster masks. All those cybermen, Sontarans, Silurians and (especially) weeping angels have hogged the galaxy by the same kind of default as Apple holds its customers to ransom with its childish products:

“We made ‘em, so now you’re gonna have to stick ‘em”.

I’d like to see a few Draconians in series 8. How well they’d suit the times! With their penchant for unopposable leadership and their ‘weirde heades of myriad bobble’ they’d be winners. Wouldn’t mind seeing another (and better) airing for the Ice Warriors too. The Troughton incarnations very definitely had me behind the settee as a kid with their scary wheezing, though I have to confess that it’s so long ago maybe I went looking for my Grandad a few times while those icy beasts marauded. His coal-riddled lungs induced many a post-Grandstand collapse — and it was always warmer in our old house behind the settee.

Ok, ok — monsterwise, I’m up for anything but the Tractators.

As I understand it, the Master is back, and if truth be told I’d have him over the rest of the rubbery hordes any day. Shame he’s rumoured to have moved on from being John Simm. I have no idea why the Beeb is trawling Hollywood for a replacement — how many better actors in the world are there than John Simm, after all? — but if we know anything at all about this fab sci-fi show it’s that it owes its longevity to the regeneration trick first pulled when William Hartnell got de-Docced back in the mid-60s. My guess is they’ll go for Will Ferrell or Beyonce.

Whatever — the main event is Capaldi himself, and as I mentioned in a previous blog post, I’m more excited by the prospect of him assuming the John Smith mantle than if James May turned up on my doorstep in an impossibly unfashionable jeans ‘n’ shirt combo and offered to cook me a no-expense-spared sherry trifle.

Capaldi’s was the blade of thespianery that cut through the travesty of The Musketeers like an X-rated Wilkinson Sword ad at a kids’ Finding Nemo matinee. Stick that in a pair of Docs and a Crombie and you’re winning. Throw in a ‘rediscovered Gallifrey with a conundrum’ plot twist, and your sensation of winning becomes more pulse-pounding than a Dalek Rel countdown commencing at a figure less than their customary zillion thousand. Layer on a copious splash of Mystery Boosted 12th Doctor Regeneration Effect, and the goosebumps rising on your flesh like Menopteran hives have the capacity to blot from the horizon any of the disused quarries masquerading as mountainous wastelands whose JCB-scarred surfaces played host to innumerable curt off-camera Pertwee remarks such as, “fuck this for a game of soldiers — I dream only of playing a talking comedy scarecrow.”

I can only hope that the eight month wait for Capaldi has not been in vain. How tragic it would be if the opening scene of series 8 induced that same unnerving sensation deep within me as when I first saw the cover of David Bowie’s Let’s Dance...

Clara backed against a hexagon array. “Doctor? Is it really you?”

“Indeed,” said Capaldi, padding his face with his fingertips, “but now it’s time to ring a few changes.”

“New costume? New villains? New opening credits?”

Capaldi shook his head. “Sorry. New companion.” A Dalek food processor attachment rose from the Tardis console, its superimposed death rays frazzling Clara in an instant. Her ashes lay still for a moment before a mistimed flash of theatrical smoke consumed them.

“What are we doing?” said Paige, her grin wider than Matt Smith’s mysterious crack.

Capaldi whipped out a cane and threw on a top hat. “Let’s start with a few tap routines and meander our way to Oklahoma! After that maybe we can tackle Grease and Phantom.”

“Any chance I can high kick my way across the Tardis set like a pair of ginger scissors while you and Elaine hum the chorus from Evita?” said Bonnie, winking like her ocular muscles had been replaced by a Cyberman's stroboscope.

Capaldi’s head flipped back as he guffawed. “Natch, baby.”

Images sourced under the influence of fan frenzy. If any are copyrighted, whup my ass and I'll take 'em down.

Monday, August 11, 2014

Everyone needs a hiatus every once in a while — unless it’s a hiatus hernia.

So with the weather being so good, I’ve opted to take two.

Kinda makes me polyhiatic, which I guess is the holiday version of wearing cushioned insoles.

What this means is that this is pretty much it for blog activity for August — here, of course, not worldwide.

Between now and September I plan to divide my time between holidaying and fixing up parts of the house that have been threatening to crumble to dust since 1991.

Then, after a much needed pre-op transvestite style bowel makeover c/o my celebrity caecum quack, I hope to return in rejuvenated form in September for more dolloping of the bollocks atop reality’s disappointingly mingy sherry trifle.

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Monday, August 4, 2014

I’m as wobbed out in the heat as a stoner hippy’s conception of normality beaten to death by wave after wave after wave of self-inflicted idleness.

Worse still, it’s been going on for a fortnight.

What I needed last weekend was a paddling pool but what I got instead was a second ascent to Kinder Scout in Derbyshire in under 3 months, complete with sub-Hades heat — and a plague of plying ants.

As my Walkin’ & Sufferin’ diary faithfully records:

“Verily did those tiny monsters nibble at arms, at face, at willy.”

Great scope for photos in that weirdsy place, however.

So come share with me the pixel-crazy fruits of my weekend of ant-induced agony, just as if I had descended on your home, your private place, armed with a vanload of photograph albums, handcuffs — and a shotgun.